Idiot mistakes 101

I'm at war with Isabella, we're side by side (she's west) and Montezuma is to the northwest. He brought me into the war, but a couple of turns later pusses out, which I don't notice. So I have a vital city sitting on Isabella's border with only two musketmen in it. I figure, Montezuma's reinforcements should be coming anytime now, I'm fine. So 4 catapults and 4 swordsmen pop out from Izzy's border. Foolishly, I'm still not concerned. Those super strong musketmen will hold them off! She doesn't attack for a couple turns, and then 4 musketmen of hers pop out of the shadows. By this time I'm like "OH $#%@!" and realize my massive army of cavalry is standing to the south defending the coast from a galley that she sent over. City razed.

Moral: Two musketmen defending the prime attack front=not a good idea.

 

Just lost a game by an idiot mastake. I was six turns away from a cultural victory and the the game ends as Gandi won the space race. To make worse I was ready to do an invasion on him to. Moral of the story look at the victory screen to see how close the others are to victory.

 

I decided to pick on one of my weaker neighbors (can't remember who). Declared war. I didn't check the Diplomatic relations screen before declaring. He had a military alliance with Peter, which subjected me to a two-front war. The invasion of Cossacks crushed me.

 

Usually my stupid mistakes involve attacking the wrong civ during my initial expansion or forgetting to scout them out before I attack.

In my current game, I was 2 turns from building the pyramids when gandhi got it. Which wasn't too bad since he was right next door to me. So I built up a dozen axes and swords to take Delhi when China, Greece and Persia all declare on Gandhi. Alex takes 4 of ghandi 5 cities and I'm one turn away from Delhi when Alex takes it and the pyramids. Alex now has about 35% land and will probably run away with a victory unless I can eliminate China quickly and take their land and instigate a war between Persia and Greece. Too bad we're all Jewish and Alex has the holy city.

Not sure if I'll be able to win now (Emporer level).

 

Last night, sent out a settler unescorted. Founded a city. Barb Razes it. I'm irritated as I am stubborn. Another settler same spot (also unescorted, war machine crushing opponents to my east). Found the city. Next turn discover judaisim. Barbs capture city (which had only one pop and didn't get razed, odd). Now i'm pissed. I retake the city (which still had only one pop). At this point i'm now sending a war stack south. Find a barb city of 4 with judaisim already established. Every city I razed going south and then east already had judaisim established by the tie i arrived to raze it,

 

meh...... i cant save the game at all.... if i try to it says the file size is 0 and if i try to exit the game.... it freezes...

*sniff* the game loves me so much, it wont let me walk away.... i must got problems.

 

Tiny map, playing as MM for Space Race Win... Way ahead of Alex and Nap who would alternately attack me and then get a city razed or highly pillaged for bugging me (MInf v. Cavalry). Working my way along figured I'd pick up the UN (after all its another Wonder nice to have), forgetting that they are both higher pop than me, both hate me, and only one of them will be on the voting options and the other would be me because I built the UN.... Lost to Diplo Victory by I forget which one.)

 

Barbs didn't raze it because holy cities cannot be razed.

 

yeah, i found that out last night

did kind of bug me though that judaisim spread to more cities outside of my empire and faster than any religion has ever spread in my empire previously, point in fact it was until a couple turns before i won that judaism spread to another of my cities

 

One thing I seem to do time and time again is sending Missionaries out to other cities and then clicking the 'give a gift' button rather than the 'soread religion' button

 

I've purposely razed Holy Cities a number of times. (-2 You razed a Holy City for Diplomatic Penalty with the previous owner). The size one city likely didn't auto-raze because of culture gained from the religion.

 

i was playing a terra map and ended up on the coast very early on and found a galley passable passage to the new world. And instead of settling the original continent i started settling the new world. I ended up going to 0% science with a -27 gpt and all the ai settling the land that i desperately needed. with the abscence of luxuries my cities started to grow unhappy and i wasnt able to support ANY military at all. I ended up losing all my new world cities to barbs while my main capital was overrun by no other than..................ghandi! Moral, get a good economy up before settling the new world.

 

Build Stonehenge, make my way toward Monotheism and use the Prophet to found Monotheism when Judaism has already been established. Oh, it's Theology that gives you Christianity...

Do the same thing, build Monotheism, switch to Organized Religion, use my Great Prophet to found Christianity, can't make it my state religion because I'm in Anarchy. A thousand years later I get Divine Right and the AI asks me if I want Islam as my state religion. Then I realize I forgot to do something when I came out of Anarchy... Didn't seem to hurt my game that much.

Building the Oracle to get my free technology then discovering I forgot that you need Pottery for Metal Casting and Writing for Code of Laws.

 

Not worrying too much about a barb about to attack an undefended city because, just like in CIV III, he'll just pillage some gold and disappear... right? Won't he??

Oh, he won't. So my capital is a barb city now. Where's that restart button?

 

Just this morning I did the biggest bonehead mistake I've ever made in any game.

Founded Moscow, and scouted a location for a second city, on a coast/plains hill covered by jungle, 2 tiles away from MARBLE. Since MARBLE is one of the rarest resources (at least in my experience) I decided to build there ASAP so I could grab The Oracle, Parthenon & Great Library, wonders which I always miss due to lack of Marble.

Once my settler got in position, the game recommended an alternate location, one tile NW on a forested hill (but still on the coast.) I studied the map and decided it was in fact a better location, the marble will just take 2 border expansions instead of one to get the marble online. And since I'm Catherine (creative) that shouldn't take very long.

However, I didn't want to waste that forest. So I delayed placing the settler for about 4 turns so my worker could chop it. This set up a number of delays and missteps that cascaded through the next several turns -- Stonehenge was FIDAL (before I could even start building it) and so was The Oracle, 3 turns away and in the middle of a forest chop. Plus, St. Petersburg was having health problems since I'd removed that one forest and had a lot more jungle to deal with (and didn't have IW due to losing the Oracle race...)

Still, everything was going smoothly right up until it was time for the next border expansion. I'd built a road to the marble, had two workers waiting there to get the quarry going, the borders popped and...

...I didn't get it. Got the tile right above and to the west of the marble, but not the marble itself. Totally forgot about the way borders grow!

Had to back up 1500 years to fix that massive blunder!!

 

My first game on Prince I was about to declare war on the pathetic Greeks to the west (I had my army on the western border) only to click on the spanish (the massive, advanced, industrious, previous ally and now pissed-off empire to the East).

 

MY WORST IDIOTIC MISTAKE:

deity huge diplomatic:
the next election would have gotten me victory, so i gave mass media to other players so that they would vote for me. washington +10 over, frederick +10 over, cyrus also +10 over, would have surely gotten victory.
i was a smart aleck. gave it to saladin as well. the problem was, EVERYONE HATED him. i got "-4 you traded with our worst enemies" from washington. because of that, i was short 60 votes, a miserable amount.
i knocked myself on the head. so stupid!
later on, i gave washington resources to raise the "we appreciate .... resources" to +2. that was roughly 50 turns later. he voted for me. victory.
you can see what i mean by looking at the HOF files...

 

I just did a fun one last night. (Forgive me if it's already in here. I can't read all 13 pages.)

Instead of hitting "what will you give me" for these two techs, I hit "please accept this gift". Doh! Where's that last autosave?

 

A small stupid, only because I thought I was being so clever.

I very carefully timed peace treaties with the only remaining threats so that they occurred on the same turn; a Great Engineer, courtesy of the Pyramids, carefully tucked away brings in the Taj for me, and I get a nice juicy Golden Age, with no war weariness, and no border threats...

... and no hammers from my towns, because I forgot to switch from Police State to UniSuff.

 

Move ship to guard fishnets... ok, now it's there: sentry, no? No! No! the OTHER sentry...
...just pillaged my own resource.